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Motorola Razr

It seems like it was a decade ago when I first got a Motorola Razr. Thin and light, clearly modeled on the Start Trek communicators, the Razr defined cool. But as all things tech, it faded from glory. Now we have smart phones.

I was a day one adopter of the Motorola Droid, which still stands as the most dramatic leap in cell phones. The Droid ushered in the era of Android and Google dominance. There are dozens, if not hundreds of Android phones now, but the original Droid stands above them all as the leader that brought about the Android revolution.

So it's only fitting that Motorola unleashed the new Droid Razr, an attempt to capture the magic of their two earlier home-runs. So did Motorola achieve what they aimed for?

The Droid Razr is an astounding work of technology. To say it is thin is a understatement. As the thinnest phone in the world, Motorola had to shave a few centimeters off of the size of the Nexus and other super-thin phones. What is most astounding about the Razr though is how light it is, it feels like a feather in your hand. The carbon composite back fits perfectly, the whole image is on of light and strong. With Kevlar and Gorilla Glass, this phone has as much Dow-Corning as it does Google-Motorola in it!

But being thin and light mean nothing if it isn't a good device. Turning the phone on shows one of the primary strengths, and a major weakness of the device. The Super AMOLED display is startling bright the bright and clear display. Looked at straight on, it is by far the best display on the market. But the display also reveals the first, and maybe only compromise of the thin design. The Razr has a very narrow viewing angle, if you get off of dead center more than 20 or 30 degrees, the screen gets a distinct, blueish tinge. All AMOLED's do this, but a little space between the glass and the screen cuts down on the effect, to keep the phone thin, Motorola put zero space in.

The OMAP 4430 duel core processor is remarkably speedy. The 2835 score on Quadrant destroyed the Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1 and Moto Xoom tablet. This is phone ready for anything you want to run on it. Multitasking is effortless, it switches from browser to games to Netflix without a hint of hesitation.

Call quality is good, as would be expected on Verizon. Web browsing on the 4G LTE network is also as expected, very fast. The camera is good, not great. Skype with the front camera gave good results, the 4G network kept the conversation smooth.

Battery life is the biggest concern, and is as would be expected, all over the map. Used as a phone and email device, the battery life is very good. If all I do is make calls and read email, I can run about 48 hours on a charge. But that isn't what one buys a phone like this for. The battery killer is clear, the 4G LTE radio. About 3 hours of web browsing will drain the phone to nothing. And it IS the LTE, because watching Netflix streaming has no more effect than simple web surfing. The phone is smart enough to turn the radio off when not used, but when it is used, the battery drains fast.

The Droid Razr is worthy of it's name, it is a top notch phone. It easily bests the iPhone 4S, but that isn't where the battle is, how it stacks up against the Nexus Prime is where the Razr will win or lose.

Personally, I wish they still made the old RAZR. If they made a flip RAZR that ran Android I would buy it in a heartbeat. I would line up outside the store for one. Thin, lightweight, and capable.

You don't find the new Droid Razr massive? Every Android phone I've held has felt massive. About an ounce more than I'm willing to carry and at least 10&#37; too large. It has started to get ridiculous. It reminds me of the days of putting an Apple MessagePad in your pocket.

I don't know how I'm in the minority, but somehow I am. The only device that even looks good to me anymore is the new BlackBerry Curve. It's small and the batter lasts forever. I find the idea of carrying a tablet in my pocket ridiculous. I see in slacks with these giant book like things in their pockets. It looks retarded.

i dont know... when i first got my 1st gen iphone i though it was huge compared to my old flip phone... then i got a 3.7" nexus one (compared to the 3.5" iphone) and it felt larger but more comfortable. my last 2 phones (htc hd2 and htc sensation) have been 4.3" and now i can never go back to something smaller... i really think it depends on what you use your phone for. i barely use my phone for voice calls or even texting. i would say that 90&#37; of my phone usage involves: web browsing, email, media streaming, ebooks, and remote surveillance. i used to have a 10" ipad and a 7" nook color that i bought for reading ebooks and websites, but i got rid of them because its not that much better than my 4.3" phone which i have on me 24/7... browsing websites on an iphone4 is painful even with retina display because its so small

And I still think the gmail email app is a pile of crap. I tried switching to a galaxy s2 on ATT but it was a very unpleasant experience. I think the sweet spot of screen size on a smartphone is 4". My 4s is at times too small but in no way do I want a tablet in my pocket.

i dont know... when i first got my 1st gen iphone i though it was huge compared to my old flip phone... then i got a 3.7" nexus one (compared to the 3.5" iphone) and it felt larger but more comfortable. my last 2 phones (htc hd2 and htc sensation) have been 4.3" and now i can never go back to something smaller... i really think it depends on what you use your phone for. i barely use my phone for voice calls or even texting. i would say that 90% of my phone usage involves: web browsing, email, media streaming, ebooks, and remote surveillance. i used to have a 10" ipad and a 7" nook color that i bought for reading ebooks and websites, but i got rid of them because its not that much better than my 4.3" phone which i have on me 24/7... browsing websites on an iphone4 is painful even with retina display because its so small

For me it's an issue of width. I have like average sized hands. I can just barely operate an iPhone/iPod Touch with one hand. I can use a BlackBerry with ease one handed. I can do almost nothing with a typical Android phone in one hand.

For browsing I guess I agree. The new Galaxy Nexus is going to sport a 720p display which is crazy. I feel like they need to start making Android devices without the phone. When I see people talking on these giant things it reminds me of sidetalking. They could probably create a phoneless Galaxy Nexus for so damn cheap.

Personally, I wish they still made the old RAZR. If they made a flip RAZR that ran Android I would buy it in a heartbeat. I would line up outside the store for one. Thin, lightweight, and capable.

You don't find the new Droid Razr massive? Every Android phone I've held has felt massive. About an ounce more than I'm willing to carry and at least 10% too large. It has started to get ridiculous. It reminds me of the days of putting an Apple MessagePad in your pocket.

I don't know how I'm in the minority, but somehow I am. The only device that even looks good to me anymore is the new BlackBerry Curve. It's small and the batter lasts forever. I find the idea of carrying a tablet in my pocket ridiculous. I see in slacks with these giant book like things in their pockets. It looks retarded.

For me it's an issue of width. I have like average sized hands. I can just barely operate an iPhone/iPod Touch with one hand. I can use a BlackBerry with ease one handed. I can do almost nothing with a typical Android phone in one hand.

For browsing I guess I agree. The new Galaxy Nexus is going to sport a 720p display which is crazy. I feel like they need to start making Android devices without the phone. When I see people talking on these giant things it reminds me of sidetalking. They could probably create a phoneless Galaxy Nexus for so damn cheap.

thats what i thought until i actually owned one for a couple of weeks... then you go back to a 3-4" phone and wonder how you ever lived with it

i have pretty average sized hands myself

the whole point of convergence is so that you dont need to carry multiple devices. due to that nature there will have to be compromise... ie a phone only can be tiny and a web browser would ideally be larger. thats why i originally said it depends on your use. i use my phone 90&#37; of the time for web browsing and video so i need a larger phone to be productive. if i actually used my phone as a phone mustly then i would probably want something smaller and compromise on browsing comfort

The Droid Razr is worthy of it's name, it is a top notch phone. It easily bests the iPhone 4S, but that isn't where the battle is, how it stacks up against the Nexus Prime is where the Razr will win or lose.

LOL. You base that on what, your 0 hours of experience and massive bias?

Android is still like a beta, 3 years after it's original release..

There is the theory of the moebius. A twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop.

Where we were, pre-Android, was a ready-for-primetime iOS. 3 years on and Android still can't maintain a stability that iOS has. Pretty much true for every open source OS..

if its about stability, id say that you should stick with the nokia products running symbian or the blackberry phones.

iOS has had its fair share of well documented bugs, the most recent being the battery draining issue on the 4gs and antenna-gate

like anything in life, there are compromises when you pick a phone.. you want rock hard stability but zero 3rd party and customizations? or do you want an open environment similar to your own libertarian views but have to deal with fragmentation and additional bugs? iOS strikes a nice compromise IMHO but its really all preference.. i personally cant go back to a 3.5" screen

if its about stability, id say that you should stick with the nokia products running symbian or the blackberry phones.

iOS has had its fair share of well documented bugs, the most recent being the battery draining issue on the 4gs and antenna-gate

like anything in life, there are compromises when you pick a phone.. you want rock hard stability but zero 3rd party and customizations? or do you want an open environment similar to your own libertarian views but have to deal with fragmentation and additional bugs? iOS strikes a nice compromise IMHO but its really all preference.. i personally cant go back to a 3.5" screen

BB stability has taken a nosedive since OS5. It's crap now. Absolute crap. The only thing that has improved is that the phone no longer takes 10m+ to boot.

I'd go as far as to say that BB OS is now one of the worst mobile operating systems. They went from being dated to just plain bad.

There are a lot of things I complain about with the phones I have and recently had. Battery life, buffering of Youtube and other video, clumsy call switching when I have multiple people on the line.

BUT, I can honestly say that stability isn't even on the list. About a month ago, my Droid II wouldn't play back a video I had shot on it. So I shut the phone off and turned it back on. That is literally the most severe stability issue I've had with any of the Android phones.

As Ima posted, I had far more stability issues with the Blackberry phones than I have with Android.